If you have an interest in Japanese stationery, you’ve likely heard of Midori, a paper products company founded in 1950. They produce everything from stickers to letter sets, and are well known for their MD Paper line of notebooks, which are celebrating their 15th anniversary this year.
As part of the anniversary, Midori has released an updated line of MD notebooks, a series of 15 special notebooks with covers drawn by different artists, and is running pop-up events around the world! I was thrilled to find out that a store close to me, M.Lovewell, would be hosting the pop-up event from March 25 to April 8. Of course, I had to stop by the store and pick up some goodies!
Capcom has just announced its latest line of collab merchandise, and it’s with the adorable shiba line Shibaban by illustrator Yasuteru Ogoshi! There are five main designs from four of Capcom’s iconic game series, Okami (Amaterasu and Oki), Monster Hunter (Palamute), Mega Man (Rush), and Resident Evil (Cerberus). The Shibanban shiba looks absolutely adorable in all of the different themed costumes!
The merchandise lineup includes everything from acrylic standees to washi tape and sticky notes. The products will be released both online on the Parco Capcom store and in official Capcom stores in Tokyo, Osaka, and Umeda on March 25th. Check out all of the super cute items below!
I find it really interesting that they chose to include Oki, as I feel like he’s not featured in a lot of merchandise. Plus, there are two dogs from Okami, and only one from each of the other games. Did they run out of Capcom dog characters? Can you think of any others that could’ve been good candidates?
Though, I’m certainly not complaining, as I love every one of the designs!
In addition to the items you can buy outright, Capcom is also releasing UFO catcher exclusive items that must be won through Capcom’s UFO catcher app, Capcom Net Catcher, or an arcade in Japan offering one of the machines.
There are two cooler bag designs at the top right! How cool is that?
All of the UFO catcher items will also release on the 25th. Guess I’ll scouring the Japanese second hand market…
Finally, there are two special tote bag designs! The Amaterasu design will be offered as a free gift at Capcom stores with any purchase of the Shibanban x Capcom line products totaling over 4,000 yen. The Palamute bag will be offered at Capcom arcades to people who spend 1500 yen on the Shibanban x Capcom UFO catcher machines; you will collect one ticket for every 500 yen deposited, and can exchange three tickets for the tote bag.
The Amaterasu and Palamute designs are definitely my favorites, so I love that they chose to put them on the promo tote bags! You bet I’d get desperate to get my hands on at least one of them if I was in Japan. Neither promotion will be available for online orders, so unfortunately they will be harder to get than the other products.
For those unfamiliar with Yasuteru Ogoshi’s Shibanban illustrations, I highly recommend checking out their Instagram account! They release lots of super cute shiba merch through Mindwave such as stickers and other stationery, as well as products with other companies. They even have a wide range of stickers for LINE!
If you are interested in trying to snag some of these items from the Parco Capcom online store when they go up for purchase on March 25th, you can do so using a forwarding service such as Tenso. For more information on my experience with Tenso, check out this post!
One of the great benefits of moving to Orange County is that I get to finally experience all the cool local events I kept seeing online when I lived in Australia! One such event is Takumi Alley, a makers mart celebrating Asian creatives and Asian culture that was held on March 12, 2023.
Takumi means “artisan” in Japanese, emphasizing the intent of the market to celebrate Asian creatives and craftsmanship. I heard about the event through Bananabelle Brown, a cookie crafter who organized the market with Okayama Kobo Bakery & Cafe and curated the vendor lineup. Even though the market was outdoors and had to be postponed a day due to weather, it appears to have been a great success, and there are plans for more in the future!
Continuing my series of Tokyo trip coverage, I’ve posted a video of all the stationery I bought when I was there! Check it out below!
One of my favorite purchases was the Nintendo Badge Arcade sticker book, which comes with 301 different stickers modeled after Nintendo Badge Arcade badges! I had no idea they even made one until I saw it in a book store at Narita airport when we were heading back to Australia. Talk about lucky! If you want to order one, they’re available to ship internationally on Amazon Japan.
Forgive me for not including extra photos of my stationery in this post, but I’m running behind on some things and didn’t get a chance to take them this time. I’ll be including stationery from my Tokyo trip in photos I post to my Instagram account over the next couple of days, so please head there if you’d like to see more!
This year I started using the Hobonichi Techo planner for the first time, and to motivate myself to keep up with it I declared that I would post a video every month of my planner pages. There’s no better way to make yourself do something than to declare to the world that you’re doing it!
Well, once ~thesis crunch~ was in full swing, I found that I simply didn’t have the capacity to stick with my promise, and ended up missing a couple of months of Hobonichi Flip Through videos. But now that I’ve had time to catch up on some entries, I’m fulfilling my promise by resuming my Hobonichi videos!
Gosh, where did the winter go?! Unlike the majority of you that live in the Northern hemisphere, here in Australia the months of June to August is for warm soups and cozy slippers… My favorite time of the year! As we say goodbye to August and hello to September and the upcoming blistering heat, here are a few of my favorite things from the past month!
